


Letter from the Ministry

by florahart



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:17:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry, who on further consideration has decided not to participate so much in the Wizarding world for a while, has been called in by the Aurors office to have a look at a situation.  There are islands, he can't breathe, Draco is surprisingly soothing, and between them, they turn out to be all right at math.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letter from the Ministry

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Teshara (LJ) for the 2012 round of hp_valensmut, and was originally posted there.

Every once in a while, I get a letter from the Ministry. I have to give them credit; they do the whole thing, with thick expensive stationery and shiny ink, not to mention the whole heavy seal imprinted with the magic and the insignia of the Minister. It's impressive, and even though I try to pretend I don't really care when I open it and give a casual read, I do respond to it exactly the way I'm supposed to.

That's pretty decent magic they've got; I ignore about 80% of everything else involving someone trying to manipulate my feelings, actions, or intentions, and at least 90% of things people at large think I should do.

This pisses people off a lot. I get it, I do. I was the hero and the savior and pick your own word for whatever bollocks you want to call a kid tossed into the fire to sink, swim, or singe at the age of eleven, and I know people had expectations. I even went along with them for a while. I defeated Voldemort, chose not to die when he killed me, had a nap, spoke at a hundred and eight funerals in two weeks--I hope never to speak at another one, which isn't to say I won't, as there are still six or eight friends that didn't die trying to help me--and signed right up for Auror training. Made it through in record time and solved a bunch of cases that others had given up on while I was doing it, actually; it turns out that spending one's adolescence preparing to defeat an evil wizard is quite a good preparatory course for that sort of thing.

But then, you know, I got to the end, and I looked at my new office, which had a fucking window even though no one has a fucking window because God, Merlin, and the Queen all know that Harry Potter gets a fucking window, and I chucked it all and fucked off to Muggledom to be a football groupie.

Shut it. I'm a terrible groupie, what with how I don't give one tiny shit who wins any games, and I also don't care who the players are, but there's an extremely significant upside, which is that what I do care about is that there's a lot of beer in this gig; a lot of camaraderie which almost always involves singing, dancing, laughing, and occasionally tumbling (meaninglessly!) with someone into bed, and almost never involves anyone actively trying to kill anyone else for real; and absolutely nothing of import resting on any part of any action I take.

So what I'm saying is, for my purposes, it's basically perfect.

But I started to explain, sometimes I get a letter.

So, after I fucked off, I guess they figured they'd give me a few weeks, which, by the way, I _roundly_ deserved, and then I'd come back and start Auring. Auroring. Whatever. When I didn't, they sent Ron, who shrugged a lot and said how I should come back and it would be fun. Then they sent Hermione who said I owed it to everyone, although, because she is nothing if not sensible, she also retracted the statement immediately. Then they sent Neville to explain how my absence had focused a hundred times the attention on him, and he wasn't like me and couldn't take it. He did agree that I ought not to have to have that kind of scrutiny either, and in fact asked, maybe a little wistfully, if he could come crash in my guest room sometimes. 

None of this was particularly convincing, although I did tell all of them that crashing in my guest room was absolutely fine (especially Neville), and that it wasn't like I'd never come round for a Sunday afternoon or something, once I'd got my bearings. Which is true; I see the Weasleys at least a couple of times a month, and Hermione is there most of the time anyway, and there's my own sort of self-imposed penance--not penance, really. But the thing I do to help make up for how many people I do owe: I'm at Hogwarts nearly every Wednesday still; the Room of Requirement was there for a reason and I'm still going to finish fixing it if it takes until I'm old and gray. So I see people then, right? Sometimes, anyway; I let myself in on my own schedule, which enables me to avoid anyone I don't want to see and see people I want to.

And again, I've gone off-track. So, after a while, Kingsley himself came to see me, and I was ready for whatever argument he was going to make, because twenty-one is a completely appropriate age at which to avoid being a productive member of society. But he didn't make an argument. He was just here to make me a deal. He'd only send case files when they were short staff and the case was important, and I was free to decline, as long as I would agree that I would never compromise their activities (I somehow, through great personal willpower and fortitude, did not actually say _duh_ out loud at this point), and as long as I understood that if there was really a serious crisis, he might come back and pressure me about all the training they'd put into me and stuff.

He didn't say, "and all the people who died for you," but I figure he knows as well as I do that that's on every page of the book of my life. 

To tell you the truth, beer and camaraderie only gets a fellow so far. It can get kind of boring. Plus, he's agreed not to harass me every bleeding day, and yeah, it's not like I won't go back for real at some point, but I have a lifetime's worth of holiday leave accrued, and when I start being an actual bona fide adult, I'm probably going to get just as sucked in as everyone else does. Look at Snape: twenty years of hard labor, and in the end, he just got screwed. I told his portrait I'd actually learned from him on that a couple of weeks ago, and I think he almost stopped looking like he had indigestion for a quarter of a second, possibly even a third, so I'm definitely doing my bit to improve the world.

He's been true to his promise (Kingsley, not Snape; he was true to a lot of them): the letters always explain what the circumstances are and remind me that as ever I am free to refuse, but he only sends me interesting shit anyway, so much so that I rather imagine he sits in his office, all leaned back and with a high degree of chuckling and finger-steepling as he decides what to send me next. But I've never turned him down, so it's working, even if we both know he's humoring me.

He totally _is_ humoring me.

Which brings us to today's letter, bright and early on a Saturday morning in July.

> _Potter,_
> 
> _Something bizarre is happening at Hogwarts. In the lake, actually. We have no idea what's going on, but a group of tiny islands seems to have formed overnight in the midst of the lake even though there's been no earth movement to explain them, and Minerva says none of the staff have been able to get close enough to see what's what. It's been nearly two weeks now, and the islands continue to grow. She's worried that without an understanding of what's happening, the school might inadvertently place students in danger; I suspect you agree with both her and me about why we want to avoid that, but I don't have anyone with much relevant experience available._
> 
> _Your call, but I'd like to know if you decide to poke around--no use me trying to send anyone in if we're just going to work at cross-purposes._
> 
> _KS_

Islands in the lake? Mysterious, possibly-dangerous ones? Is this really my area? Is this really even an area for the Aurors in the first place? It seems more like science than crime, but--oh, please. Of course I'm going to at least go look.

I jot a note to that effect and send it along, and ring up the blokes I was going out with later to say something's come up. They promise to drag my arse out to the next match, or for drinks on Thursday next, whichever comes first, and I'm good to go.

Next stop: Hogwarts.

\---

I don't know what I expected when he said a group of tiny islands. They're ...okay, I guess they're tiny islands, since there's no other good word for them, but as best I can tell, based on yesterday's careful analysis from the shore on several sides with a nice telescope and the assistance of Fang, who mostly just wanted to go walkies with me and bark several thousand times (well, he has to be good for something), most of them are about four feet across, maybe less depending on how accurate my guess as to the relative location of the squid was, and they've sprouted trees. Skinny little trees. 

I didn't think anything that one would rationally call a tree would sprout and grow in two weeks, but then, whenever I find myself puzzled by the myriad ways in which the world is strange, I recall that there was a significant period of my life when I'd have thought you were mad if you'd told me I could do magic with or without a stick, and also repel killing curses, so I guess maybe that's not so bad, all things considered.

However, that was yesterday, and today the islands themselves seem not much greater--although, again, my measuring system was slightly dodgy--but the largest of the trees appears to be perhaps twelve feet tall, and surely that isn't normal. At least, not without someone helping it along. That's not just _my_ opinion; Neville is interning with Sprout, so there are two pretty decent herbologists convenient to my investigation, and they agree: it's not right.

Also, there's this: I can get in a boat and row toward the wee islands. I cannot in fact land at them. I also cannot approach them very closely at all, and when I try I merely wind up right back where I started, and with no recollection of turning about. It's quite frustrating, which is why I've decided to take the situation in hand somewhat differently this time and approach from the air. If the lake itself is someone how building these things, well, perhaps it's not thought to form a treaty with the air directly above it, right?

...Or, perhaps it has. The minute I take off from the ground the stick feels unsteady, and perhaps it's just the crap student broom or the fact that I spend more time these days kicking a football, feet (mostly) on the ground with very little magical assistance because what fun is that, but it's as though the broom has some sort of considered objection to moving the direction of the islets. It dumps me on my arse on the far shore, leaving me to walk all the way back round rubbing my sore backside because Apparation is still not permitted on the grounds, damn it. 

And now the whole thing is just pissing me off. I consider writing to Kingsley and telling him to send some bloody experts and quit asking me to solve ridiculous riddles because the longer I stay here the more likely it is I do end up running into people I don't want to see, but damn it, now I want to know how it ends and if he sends actual scientists, it'll get buried in some report to which I'm not privy, and that would be at least as irritating as continuing to try to force my way in a bit longer will be.

Next stop: potions cabinet. I don't know if Slughorn or his successor-in-training, Will Snapwell, keep Gillyweed in there any longer, but they might, and it's a worthy cause, right? 

So here I am, staring up into the recesses of the cabinet, and all right, I knew it was deep enough for two former Death Eaters to confer for a while, but I didn't quite realize just how many wee cubbies it had, and either Slughorn or Snapwell has a system extremely dissimilar to Snape's for organization. Which means I'm going to be here a bit. 

Why yes, I did try _Accio_ , but evidently it's commonplace, and not just Snapean paranoia, to place protective charms against such tricks on one's Potions supplies. Makes sense, on consideration; I even count myself among those who would argue that very few twelve-year-olds ought to be able to swipe the supplies for Polyjuice with a simple Summoning charm. So, I start at the beginning, largely because starting in the middle would just mean losing track and also because I can hear the overlapping voices of every parental figure I've ever had telling me that's where to start.

Left hand side, top, and after a few minutes I've concluded that as everything in the first column is an ingredient chiefly used to excite some of the poisons, the arrangement is probably by use. Although, all right, I can imagine a reason to arrange by purpose, but would submit that if I were to do so, I would place agents of excitation and other disinhibitors furthest from the entry point in order to not have anyone grab them incidentally whilst trying to reach something else.

Then again, Snapwell's as Slytherin as either of the other two, so I guess any of them might reckon that carelessness ought to have consequences.

Parental voices in my head confirm that, too.

Um, these parental voices are just, you know, the way other people say they can just _hear_ their mum telling them a hundred times about whatever. Not voices like hey by the way there's a snake talking in the wall. No one needs to worry on my account.

In case you were.

So by the time I've located the Gillyweed, it's practically dark, and while I've been known, in my life, to be somewhat rash, I'm not an idiot; jumping in the lake in the dark unattended would be a damnfool thing to do, would it not? So I go on home for the night with it in a jar in my bag, and plan to come back in the morning.

Which is probably responsible for increasing the odds that Nigel and Scotty would come round looking to see if I'd finished with whatever came up.

It's a little hilarious, watching them look about my flat; obviously they thought the thing was some kind of hook-up or, more like, wild sex bender, which, all right, that would have been at least as good a reason to ditch them as the actual reason, but as I've only let someone take me home a handful of times in the three years they've known me and that's always been after several rounds at the pub, it's not like it's a _likely_ reason. Honestly.

Anyway, after they've satisfied themselves that there are no fit blokes, or for that matter nonfit blokes, or for that matter anyone else but me in my flat, nor has there been today, they insist on helping me drown my sorrows over this affair I've been not having having not happened (I would suggest they might see about enrolling in some sort of logic course if I thought it would help, but trust me when I tell you, it decidedly would not), and we hit a club that's too loud and too bright, but as I'm entirely not old enough to think either of those things of it, we dance and drink blue and pink things until three.

If I were an academic of any stripe, I might get a paper out of what might at first glance seem an obvious outcome of such shenanigans; however, it might be simplest just to note that one ought not to jump in a lake with a mouthful of slimy weed crap in one's mouth whilst nursing a class one hangover.

Why, Harry, you might be asking, did you not take anything to resolve the hangover?

I was _trying_ to apply good sense, is why; I know very well that potions and even stray flotsam can interact with transformational magics (see: Hermione with cat ears, among the many examples of my youth), and I thought I would be best served to just take things as they came. Plus, I ask you, what do Muggles do to decrease a hangover headache? Why, they duck their heads in cold water, don't they? So I was just ducking my whole body. The logic was fundamentally sound.

Except for how I forgot that alcohol is also a potential disruptor of transformational magics.

Yes, you may have spotted the trouble.

Sadly, I did not spot it soon enough, and was further hindered by the specific circumstances of the task I was trying to perform.

It turns out, Gillyweed is evidently rendered both less potent and less lasting by dilution with alcohol, and it also turns out that if one is still drinking blue stuff at three in the morning, one may well still be technically and legally drunk at nine. So.

So here I am at the bottom of the lake, walking--flippering, something. Leaping and pulling with my webbed hands--and I get halfway to the islands, and okay, I might need to backtrack. I don't know whether I've ever mentioned that one of the other effects of Gillyweed is that it clarifies the visual spectrum underwater such that the usual green and blue tints stop washing everything out and contrast improves a lot. So I can definitely see that the islands have truly sprouted up from the bottom of the lake, but not like any volcanic protrusion you've ever seen; they look like stems or stalks, not like mountains. They are just sharp lines up, with the islands on top. 

I will confess I spent a moment imagining that they were flowers and I was a tiny man, like Tom Thumb perhaps, or one of Gulliver's Lilliputians. That might have been the blue stuff talking.

So I'm halfway there, maybe a little more, trying to decide whether the island-stalks have actual roots or what, when the water starts resisting me, just like on the surface and just like the air that dumped me on my arse, and this is where everything goes into the toilet.

Not like that. I didn't shit myself when my gills retracted when I was fourteen, and I don't now. However, I do start struggling to breathe, and I do quickly realize that both my gills and my lungs are fucked up and there's no way I can get to the surface (and I'm not sure I can breathe there if I do, so making that the primary focus is likely a poor choice--I can do it, obviously, but if I expend every shred of energy I have on that and then can't breathe once I get there, then I'd be fucked, so I'm saving that for last resort). I can't be sure whether the failure of the gills is related to the islands, although looking around, I see that ordinary lake creatures seem to be doing all right, so I suspect it's actually a failure of the transformation; my lungs themselves have no local analog to guess from.

I've noted before that my teen years, for all their flaws, were a rather outstanding introduction to the practical art of thinking on one's feet, so I pull my wand from the holster along my calf and start developing and discarding options.

First try: Hey, Krum did a partial shark transformation. Of course, if my gills don't work, can I be sure that will? It's a good thought, but I'm right: there's something fundamentally wrong with the gills. Ditto Cedric's bubblehead, which leaves me choking _because_ I have gills even if it _is_ , purely technically, a nice piece of work that I build a bubble full of air down here from scratch. But if I can't breathe air and I can't breathe water and I have maybe a minute if I'm lucky, I'm going to need to think a lot faster. All right. Patronus.

I have no idea to whom I'm sending it, just, you know, "closest person who can fucking help me", and I also have no idea whether a Patronus can fully show up whilst one is drowning in the first place (these are not happy thoughts, although the fact that there is a shiny stag looking at me argues yes), nor whether one can actually convey a psychic message like one might with Legilimency, but my muscles are weakening and my feet aren't that interested in moving me away from the damned islands, so I focus as hard as I can on conveying AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LAKE OH MY GOD DO SOMETHING and send it off. I suppose if it works then we'll all have a new trick, won't we? In case of ravening psychopaths on the loose again at any point. That will make my dying of being an idiot a lot more noble, don't you think?

That I am thinking this may be the clearest sign that I'm flatly out of oxygen and must exit the water immediately if I'm going to hope to survive this, so when I can't come up with anything else I use the same approach I used all those years ago to get out of the water and onto the nearest land.

Naturally, the nearest land is the islands themselves. Fuck. And I still can't breathe for shit. I mean, I can, sort of, but I sound quite a lot like a man with pneumonia being forced to climb the face of a cliff under his own power at altitude, and I suspect I feel much like that man, too. I turn over onto my back and immediately realize that's worse, but I can't manage to turn back to my side, and I'm truly fucked now.

Still, I do have my wand in my hand from before, and if I can't turn physically, well, being good with defensive magic has its purposes. I think of turning over as self-defense because I need to fucking breathe, and manage a silent rotating charm on myself.

It works well enough; I lie still on the dirt on my side and pant.

After a few minutes, the wheezing starts to calm, although I think that's only the cessation of exertion, not an indication of any actual improvement in my circumstances. However, I can't lie here forever, or rather, I could, but it would make having bothered to get out of the water rather pointless, so I carefully, slowly, gather myself and sit up. My feet are in the water on the other side of the island, and my head is practically in it on this side; I suppose, given that I'm at nearly the widest spot, that this confirms that my dodgy calculations were apparently decent, so there's that. There are two fairly pathetic-looking trees, neither of which will probably support my weight to lean against, and, when I look up, there are coconuts.

I begin to wonder whether this--the dry land part, with wee island paradise qualities--is just a hallucination as I drown, because coconuts in Scotland seems completely unreasonable, but then I also observe that it's irrationally warm on my tiny islet, so maybe these are, what, a new example of the place stuff from the Bermuda Triangle goes?

...Really? Into the lake at Hogwarts? That seems impractical, and although other such places do exist, one hasn't formed in so long that no one was paying attention the last time, if I recall correctly. But it's not a bad hypothesis. Makes more sense than anything else I've come up with. Unless that's the hypoxia talking.

We did discuss this, the Bermuda Zone, at some point in the Auror training which was after the point at which boredom had overtaken my capacity to be interested. Crap. All I recall off hand is that one can't enter such an area under one's own power--one has to be pulled there, generally by way of the vortex in the Caribbean. That's not exactly enough information to solve all my problems, is it? At least the headache seems to have faded with the ability to breathe water--not that the gills went too, of course; something's totally fucked up about them and they're just there, anti-helping my lungs and feeling entirely odd and fluttery under my jawbone. I can't say this is my favorite hangover cure ever, but I'll take it.

So now I do have to wonder: can I actually get out? It's supposed to be challenging under the best of circumstances to get out of a Bermuda Zone (I'm going to work with the assumption that's what I've got here), and among the things I don't have are any tools at all except my wand. And any idea how, specifically, to do it in the first place.

Well, I'll need to try something; I don't even _like_ coconut, and if I did, the three up there would be a somewhat minimal supply for any length of time.

 _Accio..._ what? What do I need? A quill, I suppose, so I can tell anyone where the devil I am? A boat? A mediwizard to do something about the wheezing? Well, first things first--

"Potter, what the fuck? Bottom of the lake? How is that possibly adequate information and why did you tell _me_?" 

I look round at the sound of a man shouting to me from a distance, and realize there's someone on the shore of the lake. And that even though it's been several minutes since my desperately-drowning Patronus call, it's not like the Patronus can tell how one minute would be critical, so it must have... what? Kept checking in with people until it found someone good?

"Um. Can you hear me?" I shout back. Try to shout back, really; it's worth noting that when one is unable to breathe for shit, shouting is basically impossible.

The fellow on the shore doesn't appear to be able to hear me, which isn't exactly a shock given the previous statement, but I don't know how to resolve the problem. I could try to shake down a coconut and hurl it at him, but that seems unlikely to help, and with my luck, I'd probably knock him out cold and against all logic into the water, and then where would we be?

A moment later it occurs to me that I could try to _direct_ a coconut, with a message, and a moment after that I realize I could try to _fly_ out of here; if there's a tree, there's wood, and sure, it wouldn't be a broom, but the broom is largely a construct to assist with flight. I could probably manage it. On a good day. When not being resisted and confounded by weather, gills (I put my hand up, yep, still there and still creepy; I wish I know what is bloody wrong about them. I wonder if Snapwell let the batch go off--well, that's neither here nor there), and weird magic that might be a natural sodding wonder. Today, I think it best not to try.

But, all right, I probably _can_ bring him here to me. That would be being pulled in, right? That is, at worst he'll get a dunking, and at best, he'll have the wherewithal to get us the fuck out. Right? Summoning charms are local to the user, so, to the extent any spell requires sound as a part of the focal dynamic, it's less relevant whether one has wind or voice to say the words. And I was a right natural at Summoning charms.

" _Accio_ man on the shore," I say, concentrating on overcoming the likely disapproval of the object of the spell.

Which is how I wind up with Draco Malfoy splashing into the water a few feet off the edge of my island and flailing about in the water cursing my name, life, and ancestors.

And here I had thought this day wasn't going to get any better. For the record, Draco Malfoy is one of the people I generally hope to avoid on my trips here; we stayed friends for maybe six days after I yanked his arse out of a burning room, and then, well, we argued. Hermione told me to forget about him. Ron told me he was just playing me anyway. I mostly have tried not to think about it.

"Fucking Potter, sending me a fucking Patronus just for a prank?" he says now, paddling awkwardly toward the island.

"What?" I reach down to take his hand, then pull back, hesitating. "Not a prank, and if you pull me in, I'll definitely drown." I gesture at the gill-slits. "Something's wrong."

"Yes, you ate Gillyweed, you incomparable moron. Get _in_ the water. It's where creatures with gills _live_. You can return to shore and to harassing your betters when it wears off."

"Malfoy. I know. That's not it. If it were, I _wouldn't_ be able to talk at..." I run out of air and have to pant for a couple of breaths to finish. "Talk at all out of the water," I finally wheeze.

Malfoy rolls his eyes. "Honestly. Fine, get me up there, and I'll see what I can do."

"What _you_ can do?" I give him my hand and am marginally useful in his process of clambering up, though it leaves me gasping again.

"You sent your Patronus, you idiot. Did you not want the help of the person you sent it to?"

"What, it went to you?"

"Of course. You said you were drowning."

I must look exactly like I feel, which is confused, because he rolls his eyes again. "Because," he says slowly, as though I might have suffered a damaging amount of oxygen deprivation, "my area of specialty is respiratory trouble."

I blink a couple of times. "You're a healer? A _breathing_ healer?"

"I am a healer. I am breathing, yes."

"Not what.." to my surprise I run out of air again mid-sentence, and that's just disconcerting. "What I meant," I say eventually. I'm surprised again that he doesn't interrupt; apparently jumping right in with snark in ordinary sentences is in, but interrupting wheezing people--or, all right, wheezing _person_ \--is right out.

Which is fine; finishing the thought is difficult enough when one tries to keep talking and just can't make any more air happen; being interrupted would only be more annoying still.

"So, you took Gillyweed, and then what happened?" Malfoy asks. He has a rather damp bag over his shoulder and sets that on the one square foot of ground not being taken up by one of us; if I pushed with the force of a fairly scrawny toddler, I could dump him right back into the lake easily. He gets out a contraption that looks like something crossed between my Aunt Petunia's pinking shears and a pepper mill, and starts grinding the air around my head. 

"Then I jumped in the water, of course. I was here to investigate these ridiculous tiny islands for the Ministry--" I don't know why I throw that in; apparently I need to impress Malfoy with my half-on, half-off life of public service? But then, he's in medicine, maybe he _would_ approve. I don't know why I care any more. "And flying and boating wouldn't get me here, so. Gillyweed, jump. And it was fine at first. Mostly." I pause for air. "Hangover, so my eyes felt a bit gummy--"

"And you didn't have any oxberry extract to overcome the effects?"

"No. What?"

"You took Gillyweed. Into an unknown situation. Whilst hung over. With no compensatory-- were you perchance also wearing a pendant bearing the letter T for Troll? As identification, of course."

"Can't say I was," I say. "Why?"

"Because--and of course, I'm certain you did absolutely no reading the _first_ time you used the stuff because that's what Granger's for, I know, but you're ostensibly an adult now--Gillyweed is a class six substance. You have to know what you're _doing_ with it so as not to wind up with a conflict. Honestly." 

He completes the grinding path around my head and waves a tiny and complicated pattern around the device, then sets it down. "It'll be just a moment for that to finish the assessment. Meanwhile, I don't suppose you'd like to tell my why the shit you got up hung over one morning and decided going for a lake-bottom stroll was just the thing? Also, investigating for the Ministry? Last I heard you'd buggered off to some sort of life of quiet contemplation. Or of irresponsible decadence, more probably."

"I didn't get up hung over and. Just decide. And once I was here I did figure out--well, maybe figure out--the problem; it's a Bermuda Zone. A new one. Anyway, so I planned it, but then. There was a..." I consider whether I want to use the word 'party', which is probably just going to increase the perception I'm an irresponsible twit, but since when have I cared what Malfoy thinks? If your response is, since you were eleven, you dolt, all right, you may have a point, but I've all but made a career, these last several years, of ostentatiously not caring, and Malfoy has no leg to stand on in any discussion of irresponsible decadence anyway, so I just go ahead. "There was a last-minute party," I say.

"Of course there was. Harry Potter does fuckall for five years, and still is the life of the party, is that it?"

"No." I shrug. "Muggle party, and as none of my mates have the foggiest idea who Harry Potter is, other than the bloke who goes to football matches and is always good for a pint..." I shrug again. "So that would be a no."

The pepper grinder pinking shears device emits a tone that sets the nearby water rippling, and Malfoy looks at it for a moment, reading off information that might as well be in invisible Greek runes for all I know what it says. "Oh, for fuck's sake," he snaps. "You've managed something entirely new. Of course you fucking have."

"So, that's bad?"

"It's bad because there's no known approach to managing the situation. Fine, creativity it is." He steps closer (I don't know how; we're practically in each other's watch pockets anyway) and puts his hand up to examine the gill-slits.

I shudder.

"Does that hurt?"

Problematically, it's not that it hurts; it's that unbeknownst to me, ill-formed gill slits apparently have a direct and startlingly strong connection to my dick. "No, just startled," I say, carefully pretending I don't have a standing attraction to Malfoy that's working against me. Hard. So to speak.

"Uh-huh." He doesn't quite roll his eyes again, but he might as well; it's clear that he realizes I'm lying.

"Well, it doesn't hurt, no," I protest.

"So what _does_ it feel like?" He prods a little, and I shudder again, and I'm reminded of a time all those years ago, during our six day truce. Okay, _several_ times during that six days, if I'm honest. Best not to think about it. He lifts a brow. "Well?"

"It feels..." I can't quite work out how to convey, _it feels like a fucking fantasy, like you're stroking me in some incredibly dirty place, like I'm about to come in my pants..._ without actually saying that.

I also can't work out how to have this not become utterly obvious; I'm dressed more or less appropriately for an excursion into the lake, and swimming costumes are not noteworthy for the extent to which they shield one's cock from observation. Damn it.

"It feels like you're stroking my balls," I finally manage to wheeze; unsurprisingly, the sensation is only making me shorter of breath and I find I have to concentrate to remember to breathe at all. And that's a problem, because there is nothing quite like sex to distract one from all capacity to concentrate. "Could you, could you either." I step back, splashing into the water over my head because I am a complete idiot and managed to forget I am standing (well. _was_ standing) on a tiny island no larger than the closet under the stairs, and that I know perfectly well there's no ledge under the water.

On the plus side, cold water is, in addition to being a known hangover solution, an excellent way to kill a burgeoning erection.

On the minus side, being plunged under the surface unexpectedly is, as I am demonstrating right now, extremely detrimental for breathing when one is wheezing and respiratorily challenged in the first place.

Needless to say, my response, despite some quite-fruitless thrashing and gasping, is to sink. Fast.

"Jesus fuck, Potter," Malfoy says right in my ear, which is when I realize he's cast a great bubble-head charm that's encompassing most of his upper body and also, because he's working to propel me upward by hand, some of mine. "You act like a man who _wants_ to drown. Is that it? You're trying to discredit me by dying of the very thing from which I save people while I stand not two feet away looking on helplessly and trying to work out what your gills have to do with your bollocks?"

I don't have the wind to say anything, so I just shake my head and try not to pass out. 

"It could be the light, but I think you're turning blue," Malfoy says, casual and conversational as though it's not a fucking _emergency_ right here, because I am very sure he's right about the blue thing. It's not my color. Of course, I can't say a damn thing, so all I can do is clutch at him and watch the overhead light come closer as we climb.

And keep trying not to pass out.

This is becoming the pattern of my day.

Finally, he gets me back onto solid if tiny ground and holds me still, on my side, hand on my shoulder while I remember once again how to not turn blue.

I think he might be gently rubbing my shoulder and my back, actually. It feels nice.

"Malfoy?" I eventually say.

"Are you going to freak the fuck out again if I try to examine you some more? It's been nearly thirty minutes since I got here, and I've pieced together that there was some significant amount of time before that; those gills should have retracted to nothing at all by now."

"I know. And probably, since it feels like, um, you know."

"Like I'm giving you a hand job. And we can't have me soiling you like that, of course, I know; however, unless you plan to send a telepathic Patronus to locate _another_ qualified witch or wizard--could you even? Generate a Patronus now?"

"No, No, Yes, Why?"

"What?"

"No, not a complaint but a concern. No, not planning on sending. Yes, could. Why?" I feel a little better, and spitting out that many words in a row is difficult but not exhausting, but I have learned to just fucking stay down and not on my back, so I stay where I am. Which, now that I think about it, is with my head on Malfoy's thigh. Perfect.

"Not--all right, that's for later. I just wondered, is why, since I don't know that I could manage one while critically ill, and since your lips are still not the right color, I'm going to say you are."

"The right color?"

"What? Potter, look at me. Here, roll--I'll put you back on your side in a second. What did I say?"

I roll my eyes, although my whole body feels sluggish and weird, so I think it might be a rather unsubstantive sort of roll. "I was joking. You said. Lips, wrong color, I'm ill."

"Yes, and let's review how--wait, roll back. There you are. Let's review how you and I have virtually no history of jokes being enjoyed by both of us at the same time, and how you are seriously fucked up because, oh hey, some magic no one understands and some poison and what you've got is me."

"Sorry. No joking. Can you fix it?"

"Can you stand for me to do some tests?"

"Yeah, but it's not my fault if it feels like sex."

Malfoy snorts quietly. "Fine." He tips my jaw up. "This isn't closing your throat?"

"No."

"All right. Ready?"

I don't know how he supposes I will gather my oxygen-deprived self for another round of neckside handjobbery, but it's not as though it will help for me to refuse, and also--and I plan not to explain this part at any point--it did feel shockingly, sort of achingly, _nice_ before, which was why I stepped back and into the drink by mistake. So I just nod.

It's not like before; it's worse. He's using his fingers and his wand, muttering charms that only halfway make sense and sending tingling sparks through me, and fuck it, he can just deal with my obvious response. I claw at the drawstring on my swimwear and, when it's difficult to open, press my hand against my crotch. Christ.

"You're making this harder," he says as I start to rock against my own hand, seeking the pressure.

"Don't think that's me doing it, actually."

He reaches and grabs for my hand, pulling it away. "Potter, I need you not to exert yourself. I'm sorry. I think I've nearly worked out what the fuck is wrong, but I don't need you passing out of fucking _orgasm_ while I'm working. Also, watching you touch yourself is really fucking distracting."

"Sorry." I stretch my jaw up higher. "I'll be good."

"Of course you will. You're always good."

"Thought we weren't joking."

"I'm not. You're the poster-boy for extreme goodness, aren't you?"

"Was. Now I watch football and drink beer."

"Uh huh." Malfoy shifts to keep hold of my hand and still keep prodding at my neck. "I'm positive there have been no cases of someone doing that whilst being fundamentally extremely good. Now hold still; this might... pinch. Try not to hold your breath."

Pinch is in no way descriptive of what he does next, which mostly feels as though he might be turning my lungs inside out and scouring them with a toothbrush along the way to repositioning them somewhere in the vicinity of my navel. Distressingly, this does nothing to diminish the throbbing between my legs, which is just confounding, because I'm not exactly a fan of pain. 

"I said, _don't_ hold your breath," Malfoy says, which is when I realize I am, so I deliberately blow out the air in my lungs and carefully breathe in again. Oh. 

"That's better," I say. Except... I shake loose my hand from where he's still holding and touch my neck. Yes, the gills are still there. "Um."

"Those will seal up in the next while," Malfoy explains. "I repaired your lungs, but one effect was to also restart the cycle the Gillyweed engenders. I could explain the maths if you like." 

He sounds bored, and I turn onto my back to look up at him. "But I'm all right in the air."

"Yes, I thought it might be problematic to dump you back into the water for another hour, as we've still got to work out how the fuck to _get out of a Bermuda Zone._ Especially one whose nature and dimensions are unknown."

"Oh. Right."

"Christ, Potter. How did you survive childhood?"

"Barely, is one answer. I take it you don't think you can get us both out of here?"

"No. There are a lot of things I'm good at, but if I recall correctly, Bermuda Zones basically work out to be a sort of permanent, self-sustaining unretraceable translocation charm, and that's more geometry than anything I carry about in my head, so even if this one is fully natural I can't say I can get out before I'm an old man."

"So, you think my theory is right. Also, why do you even _know_ that?"

"You don't think this sort of thing ever came up in my sitting room during the summer before seventh year?"

I consider that. "You said even fully natural. So, it was intended... what, as a weapon? How would that work?"

Malfoy doesn't meet my eyes as he recites, "if it were made truly impermeable from the inside, then it could be used to trap our enemies, of course."

"That's ...horrifying, but brilliant."

"Ah, the definition of Voldemort."

"True." 

"There were experiments. It's _possible_ that this bubble is the result of one, although I'm very certain there was no spoken plan to place such a thing at Hogwarts--although, with Dumbledore gone and Snape in place, perhaps."

"The Carrows would have thought it was hilarious. ...Wait, so you think we're both stuck here? Really, seriously, impenetrably stuck?" That's not a happy thought, in no small part because I brought him in here with me, when I could have just died alone.

"Maybe." Malfoy chews his lip. "Where were you when you sent the Patronus?"

"In the water."

He rolls his eyes. "Yes, yes, I know. In the water near the shore? Or was it after you breached the bubble of the zone itself?"

I think about that a minute. "I can't be sure, but I think after. But, I mean, I was also dying at the time, so my perceptions might have been kind of fucked up. Plus, if it was that, I bet this place wouldn't be tropical. I bet it would be more Britain-like, right? Because it would be pulling people through from, like, London or maybe somewhere in Wales?"

He relaxes visibly. "True. Good. All right, so it's just another of the ones we already understand. Which still doesn't mean we can get out."

I consider that for a minute. "Hey, okay, so your problem is that you don't have the information on hand? To work out the geometry?"

"What?"

"I'm pants at doing anything creative with that kind of thing, but I did look at a bunch of books... how's your Legilimency?"

Malfoy blinks down at me. "Why?"

"Well, I mean, maybe I _have_ information but can't effectively _use_ it, and you can _use_ it, but don't _have_ it, in which case it seems as though you having a look at it would be, well, useful. But I don't think mine's good enough alone, if you're not also at least basically competent--but Snape was your teacher and friend a lot longer than he was mine. That I knew of. So?"

"And you want me rummaging about in your head."

"Not especially, in the same way I also don't want _Hermione_ rummaging because she'll just be all disappointed in the times I was an idiot, but I mean, the other choice is I try to remember on my own what might be useful...?"

Malfoy stares at me for several seconds, then nods. "All right." I sit up and look around. 

"You know, I think the other island, there, is bigger than this one." I point. "At least eight or nine feet across instead of five. Should we see if we can go over there?" The channel between the two isn't all that wide, and while I'm not a very strong swimmer when I don't have Gillyweed on my side, I should think thirty or forty feet would be doable.

"You might splinch," Malfoy says. "Although other spells have been all right."

"Oh. I guess I could try to Apparate, since if this is a Bermuda Zone it might not recognize Hogwarts' wards. I was thinking swim."

Malfoy sighs. "Of course you were. But you're right, we'd be more able to concentrate on the task at hand if we weren't worried about another dunking at any moment."

"Assuming we can actually get over there and the islands aren't all separate."

"True. Let's try, then." Malfoy presses his lips together in concentration and vanishes, reappearing on the next island over. "It works," he calls. He sounds surprised, and actually, so am I.

"So good you told me. I wasn't sure," I call back. I follow him over and sit down in the sand. "At least this island has _five_ coconuts," I point out. "If we get hungry."

"Point." He sits facing me and says, "We could just try to Summon books on the subject, you know."

"Mostly restricted, makes it harder, and also I doubt they're mostly at Hogwarts. They're probably at the Ministry, a long ways away."

"Another point to Potter. All right, so." He gets out a quill and some parchment, setting his bag across his knees as a makeshift desk, then hesitates.

"Just... go on," I tell him. "I won't stop you."

And so he does. I feel the sense of him climbing into my skull, gentler than Snape ever way (Voldemort is no comparison at all) and timider than anything I dealt with in my training. He pauses there for a minute and I think he's trying to decide where to look, so I deliberately ignore all thoughts of how long it's been since the two of us did anything remotely cooperative and carefully think back to the boring lecture and the materials being projected into the air. I can't remember them clearly on my own, but Malfoy knows what he's looking for, and as he examines them, the words and images clarify for me, too. 

"Oh," I say aloud. "That looks relevant."

He's there with me, reading, and it feels like he nods. It feels like an absent nod, as though now that he's in my head with me, he's paying no attention to _me_ at all. 

"You're a liar," I say quietly. "You've had some practice at this."

"Shut it," he says. "I'm working." And he is: I can tell he's making notes with his physical body while he reads, and so I just let him, remembering the lecture as best I can and letting him prompt me to move forward when he's read a particular page. It feels soothing, and I smile.

After a time, and you understand it's quite difficult to accurately assess the passage of time in this sort of circumstance, we're done: he's read all I can remember and I find myself watching him there in my head as he thinks. "Should we--"

"Right," he says, and just like that he's gone, and I'm blinking stupidly at him as the sun sets and I realize I've a sunburned nose and my gills have finally gone away, and his hands are on my throat again, checking.

"Malfoy?"

"Hmm?"

"It still feels nice. Your hands."

He does say anything for a few seconds, just long enough for the pause to be awkward, then clears his throat. "Interesting."

"Did you get what you need?"

"I--yes." He gestures to the scroll he's filled up with notes, and I realize he was developing a plan all along the margins as he went.

"I didn't--shit, this sounds like the worst compliment ever, but I didn't realize you were this smart," I say. My face is already hot from the sunburn, but I can tell I'm blushing, which is just stupid.

"Wow, that _is_ dreadful, as compliments go. Also, it's not as though you weren't contributing," he says. He looks away. "In any case, I think I can get us out of here, but I also think we're both exhausted."

"And likely to screw up because of it."

"Exactly. We should sleep first and try this out in the morning when we're fresh."

I nod. "Right. So, let's see. We have coconuts--" My stomach rumbles and I grimace. "--which I don't suppose you know how to transfigure into something more steak-like?"

"I wish. I hate coconut, but I suck at food charms. Still, I don't see starving as a better option."

"Me, either. We have palm trees, which I certainly _can_ transfigure into... hm." I summon down every branch on the palm tree overhead and manage a sad but stable tent and a couple of blankets, but I'm tireder than even I had realized, and anything sturdier is off the table.

Malfoy splits the coconut in two and wrinkles his nose. "Maybe Hogwarts is close enough to manage Summoning some nice ...anything but coconut," he says.

I'm busy observing that my clothes are nasty from bouts of lake water and lake-bottom slime and drying, twice, plus sand. "Obviously if I had to be stuck here with someone it was meant to be you," I say. "Everyone else thinks coconut is delicious."

"They're all wrong. Also, no flirting."

As he says this, I'm busy pulling my shirt over my head because a scouring charm is definitely necessary, and I don't want to concentrate hard enough to avoid scouring my skin through the fabric. I like keeping my skin intact. "Flirting?" I say through the shirt.

When I finish pulling it off he's standing in front of me, offering half a coconut. "Yes."

"I wasn't. I was observing that you and I are the only two people in, apparently, the western world, who do not like coconut." I take it. "Did you try the Summoning thing? Oh, hey, but Hogsmeade might actually be closer, from here. I could go for something from the pub."

"Now that's a thought. No one's really _at_ Hogwarts this time of year, so it's not as though the kitchen is fully stocked." He shrugs and turns toward Hogsmeade (unnecessary, of course, but a lot of magic ritual is about helping with focus) and brings two thick bowls of stew to his hands. A bottle of whisky lands with a gentle thump in the sand at his feet.

"Nice," I say. I take one of the bowls and bend to pick up the whisky and set everything on the single flat rock on this beach, then drape one of the blankets over my shoulders and finish stripping because I am going to clean up my clothes before I eat. "Want me to do yours, too?" I ask over my shoulder as I use a sticking charm to hang everything against the tree trunk.

He shakes his head. "I think I can just wait," he says. 

"What, you've suddenly got shy? Um, I mean, it's all right if you are. Shy. I'm just surprised because you were always kind of fastidious about certain things, seemed like." I finish scourgifying my clothes and give them a sniff. Good enough, I guess. Still, I think I'll let them air out a bit before I put them back on. I knot the blanket around my middle, more or less, and sit down at the rock to eat my stew. "This is good," I say after a couple of bites. He's still standing, scooping bites into his mouth. "Ambiance sucks, but it could be a lot worse."

"The ambiance is probably just about what a great many people would pay to have," Malfoy points out, stepping closer and setting down his half-empty stew. "Tropical, secluded..."

"Aw, now _you're_ flirting," I say. "Kidding! " I add when he scowls. "No, it's true. You're right." I pick up the whisky and uncork it, trying to think what to say next because the present situation is basically the definition of awkward, and if we're going to sleep in a tent together, awkward will be, well. Awkward.

I take a long pull off the bottle, then wipe my eyes; I often forget just _how_ startling Firewhisky can be when one mostly is accustomed to ordinary Muggle ale. "Here." I hand him the bottle. 

"I've never acquired much of a taste for anything like this," he says.

"Then why'd you bring it here?" I ask.

"You asked for something from the pub. I've seen you order this before, so I suppose I thought it was what you meant."

I shrug. "It was, but you're welcome to share if you like, or have something else. Can I offer you a lovely half a coconut?"

"Arse." He takes the bottle and sips a little bit, then coughs. "I always forget."

"Yeah, I know." I go back to work on my stew, and he takes another longer drink from the bottle, and then we trade. Okay, the ambiance is maybe not so bad, all things considered. Between us we work our way through maybe a third of the bottle, and then I cork it back up. "Waking up hung over would probably just end badly," I say.

He nods, and goes to the edge of the island to rinse out the bowls. See? Fastidious about that. "I can still clean up your clothes," I say.

He stands and turns around. "It probably would feel better," he says, "but..." He shakes his head and goes to the tent, leaving the bowls on the flat rock, and crawls in, lying on top of his blanket and staring up through the fairly numerous holes in the 'fabric'.

I shrug and follow him in, unknotting my blanket and pulling it up around me as I take off my glasses and set them overhead.

"You're just going to sleep like that?"

"Um. Yes?"

"Oh."

He doesn't say anything else, and I'm not sure I actually want to get up and go fetch my clothes unless he's actually offended, so I wait. Finally, when even I can see he's still lying there, eyes open, ten minutes later, I mutter, "Would you be more comfortable if I were dressed?"

"No. Yes. Shit."

"Well. That clears that right up."

"I know. Look. When you were having so much difficulty, earlier? Not the breathing. The other part."

"The wildly inappropriate erection part? What about it?"

"You're so casual about that."

"Freaking out didn't go very well, did it?"

"Point, I suppose. In any case, it wasn't just affecting you. So yes, I would be more comfortable because there would be more separating us, but no, I would not be more comfortable because really, I want..."

I wait (and you may be unsurprised when I tell you that my cock wakes up and waits, too. It's independent like that), because it sounds like he's asserting that the reason it would be worse would be that the odds of sex would decrease (I think he might be a bit mad; he knows it's fully possible to have sex with clothes on, although in my limited experience it's not all that comfortable).

"When I stopped you it wasn't because you were going to make _you_ come, is what I'm saying, and now--all right, I don't know if you've noticed, but this conversation is completely horrible."

"It is. Is there anything else you want to avoid saying outright?"

"You are a complete arse."

"No, I think that part you generally say clearly. I mean, besides that apparently we want to jump each other, what else?"

"Do we? Both want to ...do that?"

"Malfoy, for a man who grew up accustomed to taking every advantage offered or otherwise, you are still surprisingly indirect about this sort of thing. Also, I can't answer for you, but I already _did_ answer for me." I don't actually wait for him to confirm; he'll stop me if I'm doing something he doesn't like, so I roll my blanket onto his and unfurl it, stretching out naked next to and above him and sliding my hand into his hair to lift his face to mine. 

"If you're fucking with me I'll kill you," he mutters.

"I'm hoping there will be fucking, but not like that."

"Good." 

And then--all right. Earlier, I realized that Legilimency with Malfoy was easy. Gentle. That it didn't hurt, wasn't difficult, all that. What I didn't realize was how easy it would be to return to that state, but all at once, he's in my head, and I'm in his, and I can see how much he wants this. How much he _has_ wanted it, apparently since, well. Since we fought, and I'm an idiot because I've wanted it too but I just never thought it was an option, so I never let it be very real in my head.

He must have been occluding for all he was worth, before, because I'm occasionally dense (it might be more than occasionally), but I could not possibly have missed this because it's like a hot blue flame between us, moving and fascinating and so very compelling. In two seconds I'm right back where I was hours ago, achingly hard and ready to come with the least friction or--I don't know, maybe the least hint of getting any.

Christ. "Malfoy, we are both complete idiots not to have been doing this all along," I tell him. Because this can't be normal. This is special, and we are, in fact, idiots. I don't let him answer; I have other ideas for what he can do with his mouth and they mostly involve sucking, biting, kissing, and gasping. But they start with kissing.

Doesn't matter; he's _in my head_ , and he can tell me what he thinks. 

But what he comes up with is a throaty groan against my mouth (Christ. If he's going to do that, I'm going to have to plug up my ears) and a vague sense of agreement that yes, we are both idiots, and then he pushes me off him. "Seriously, not fucking with me," he says.

"Very seriously. Also, please, _please_ tell me the reason you pushed me away was so we could take off your trousers."

"The thought had crossed my mind," he says. 

"Excellent." I reach for his belt. "Do you have other thoughts?"

He sighs and lets me undress him, lifting his hips as I pull his trousers off and shuddering as I push his shirt up, kissing his belly as I follow the hem with my nose. "Potter, you know I'm terrible at saying what I want. I just--"

I silence him with another kiss. "I know. Show me?" I tap my temple. "Please?"

He arches up against me, and for all his earlier control, all the occlusion and direction and focus, now he's a chaotic mess, all _yes_ and _now_ and _please_.

I wonder, fleetingly, if he's been with anyone else, and he growls and flips me over, kissing his way down my body as though he knows exactly, perfectly, where he's going. Which, it turns out, he does. He takes my cock in his mouth and slides two fingers into me roughly, and while I could argue I wasn't entirely prepared for that, he knows that I like it. 

My cock throbs and I reach between his chin and my groin to squeeze. "Now who's fucking with who?" I ask. 

He shakes his head, lips still fastened around the tip, and bites gently, pulling my hand away and pushing in some indescribable way at the link between us.

I arch up and come, in his mouth and on his lips, and then he's swallowing me back down again, and all I can do is shout.

When he sits up on his knees, lips swollen and wet, eyes wide and startled yet, I want nothing more than to watch him come apart, and I pull my legs up and wide in invitation.

He hesitates, and I mutter the lube charm myself. "Please," I tell him. "You have to be close."

He is, I can tell, and I wonder for an instant whether we'll _always_ be able to tell like this, if there's Legilimency involved, or if it's just because today has been so... dramatic. I don't care; right now I want him in me.

"Good?" I ask as he presses in slowly. He's shaking, from exertion and emotion and restraint, and I drop my legs down to wrap around his thighs and pull him in. "Better?"

He nods and kisses me, and because I can feel some of what he does, my legs shake when his do and my cock twitches between us. I suspect this is going to be a long, not very restful, thoroughly wonderful, night.

I wake up to bright sunshine mid-morning, sore--sore everywhere, really, from the ache in my neck where my body reshaped itself yesterday to the twinge in my arse because lube is all well and good, but will only do so much to the exercised sensation of muscles worked unexpectedly hard--and I half expect to find him dressed already, avoiding me, ignoring what happened.

I'm pleasantly surprised.

He's up and partly dressed, his shirt hanging open and his feet bare, and he has smudges and bruises on his chest and, although I can't see them, on his thighs and his arse, and he's watching me. "I've checked the maths," he says. 

"All right. I suppose we should get this over with?" I throw off the blanket and stretch, then go fetch my clothes.

"Do you want to know what I found in the maths?"

I pause with my shirt halfway over my head. "Um, I don't know. Do I?"

"I found that until this place solidifies at a size and shape, attempting to leave will be risky."

"Crap."

"Do you still want to get it over with?" We're not actually linked now, no Legilimency involved, but I think I hear a different question never the less. I think what he's actually asking is, _do you really want to get away from me?_ and I look at him and sigh. 

"What? I don't know. How risky? Can you compensate? Would you rather stay here and sneak some more food from somewhere instead and try to set a new record for how many ways two men can get each other off?"

He flushes pink. "Potter, you don't have to go on like that. You already got off. A lot."

"I know. And I mean, we can do that not-here, but if you're worried about the risk, then I just want to know if you think you can. I trust you."

He stares at me, like he's not sure how to take that, like he thinks it must be a trick, and I silently curse his upbringing for making him so suspicious (but no, I know, it's what made him who he is, so I can't be too upset. And yet). "I think I can," he says after a moment's thought. "And I don't know how long the solidification will take. So there's no way to tell how much time we're talking about."

I purse my lips. "Will it get easier as the little islands mature?"

"Probably."

"Then it's up to you," I tell him. "But I hope wherever we are tonight, you let me suck you dry. And it's probably my turn to cook."

He swallows hard. "I'll take that under advisement," he says. "And I think I can do it."

"Then we should go." I pull my swim shorts on. "Tell me what to do."

He smirks at that, and I grin.

"You know this--" I gesture back and forth between us-- "will probably be a giant pain in the arse. It'll be in the papers. I'll hate it. Before that happens, I want to point out that I will still think it's worth it."

"Christ, Potter, how _do_ you maintain that level of sap and still function. Now here, look at the chart. We've got to combine these two charms by..."


End file.
